Courtesy Galveston County Office of Emergency Management

It's the FINAL COUNTDOWN...DA DA DAH DAH, DA DA DA DA DA!!!

3...2...1...HUNKER! Along the Gulf Coast, most of us are keenly aware of the approach of hurricane season each year. Even if we don't know the exact date it starts (June 1), we know that the advance of summer and hotter temperatures means the tropics are about to get busy. Some people really prepare, while the rest wait until a storm is threatening us and then race to the store for bottled water, batteries and beer. This not only helps the local economy, it gives TV stations plenty of file footage of empty shelves for future disasters.

But apparently the folks at the Galveston Office of Emergency Management think all that rushing around on the eve of destruction is a bad idea. County Judge Mark Henry, in particular, pooh-poohs the idea and, in collaboration with Clear Channel Outdoor, has decided to hang up some truly massive digital billboards with digital countdown clocks on them to remind us all that there's a storm (season) a-brewin'.

More »

Screengrab via Weather.com.

There comes a time every May where the days start to get a little longer, the temperatures start to get a little hotter and our eyes turn to those big bodies of water flanking us that we've been ignoring the last few months. Hurricane season may start June 1, but the truth is hurricanes form when they damn well please.

If you had May 15 in your "Day the First Tropical Depression Forms" office pool, then it's time to celebrate because right now in the Pacific, there's a storm brewing.

More »

It's that time again. No, not hurricane season, it's hurricane-predictin' season, partner. So get out yer slide rule and a room full of supercomputers. Grab the nerdiest guy you can find and shelter in place because this is going to be a wild ride.

Every year in April, the forecasters begin laying out their predictions for the coming hurricane season, which begins on June 1. I wrote about a couple that came out last week, but yesterday Bill Gray and Phil Klotzbach of Colorado State University released their seasonal forecast. The pair of scientists is considered the best in the business.

Not surprisingly, they called for a very busy season: 18 named storms including nine hurricanes, four of which will be major storms. This is right about in the middle of the prediction pack, though the number of named storms is higher than most. But what can predictions this early in the year and this far from the heart of hurricane season actually tell us? Here are five things to consider.

More »

Last year when the world was held rapt at the plight of Northeastern residents during "Super Storm" Sandy, we along the Gulf Coast chuckled. Not at the suffering of the people there. In fact, we understand those poor people and what they went through better than just about anyone else. We were laughing over the coverage for a storm that, in these parts, wouldn't even stop us from going to work. Hell, it would take a bigger storm than Sandy to get us to hunker down and a much bigger one to actually evacuate.

That's because, like the calluses you build up when you spend your summer walking on hot pavement (anyone else remember that?), we've developed a tolerance for the weather that accompanies hurricane season. We know how to prepare. We know what to do when threatened. We're veterans.

Still, every year about this time, the first really serious predictions for what we might expect beginning June 1 and ending November 30, and we all take notice. So far, a couple prediction models have come out -- the biggie by Bill Gray and Phil Klotzbach of Colorado State University will be released next week -- and they both predict a busy hurricane season in the Atlantic and particularly along the Gulf Coast.

More »

Summer's almost here, right?

New York, Boston and the rest of New England are expected to be pounded today and tomorrow with a massive storm that could dump three feet of snow on residents.

Being used to awesomely bad weather here on the Gulf Coast, we have a couple of tips. We also would like to compare massive blizzards to tropical storms/hurricanes, to see which is worse.

Ready? Let's get this done, New York, before your power goes out!!

TIPS:
1. Stock up on non-perishable food
You'll eat this the first night, before you quickly discover that you've got plenty of food in the pantry that tastes way better than the refried-beans mix that was the only think left on the ShopRite shelves. At that point normal eating will resume.

More »

Hey, East Coast, how you doin'? Sorry, our Jersey accent is a little rusty. We along the Gulf Coast have been watching with interest the furor over Hurricane Sandy as it makes its way towards the Jersey Shore. Maybe the hurricane wants to do some gambling. Maybe it wants to re-enact the entire movie Snake Eyes. Whatever the case, she's coming for you and, just like we wouldn't be prepared if we were hit by a blizzard, y'all (that's our word for you guys) are starting to rightfully freak out.

Since we have to deal with hurricanes every year -- you probably don't remember since it barely made the news, but in 2008, we had a hurricane quite a bit worse than Sandy hit us in Houston called Ike -- we thought we might offer a little advice on how to deal with Sandy as she rolls down the Jersey Turnpike. Here are our five best suggestions.

More »

Courtesy WeatherUnderground

Yeah, you heard me. It might sound like a bold prediction, but it's actually safer than you think.

I've often told my friends that my favorite day of the year is October 1. The reason for this is that football season has started, basketball training camp is about to open, the holidays are on the way, the first cool fronts are about to make their way through Houston (if they haven't already) and, for our area, hurricane season is over. Of course, this is the first week of September, not October, but Christmas might be coming a little early for us this year.

The graphic above is a series of model runs on Invest 90l or the little gift Hurricane Isaac left behind. After Isaac moved into the Midwest, the storm split in two, with half moving off to the Northeast and the other half migrating towards the Gulf of Mexico. The National Hurricane Center thinks this disturbance has some chance of developing, but note how all the models whip that bad boy around and send it east. That is all thanks to our first cool front of the year.

More »

Roker and Cantore ride out Isaac.

The circus has finally left New Orleans as they begin their cleanup after Hurricane Isaac dropped boatloads of rain on the Big Easy earlier this week. Despite some dire early warnings and a near-miss of the GOP convention in Tampa Bay, Isaac was fairly tame by hurricane standards. That didn't stop it from inundating three states and doing some serious damage.

As we review the aftermath, there are a few things we can take from Isaac and most of them, fortunately, are positive.

More »

GFS model run from overnight Sunday.

Fortunately for everyone along the Gulf Coast, Isaac is still a tropical storm as of Monday morning. The storm has yet to form a solid inner core thanks to some wind shear from an upper-level disturbance near it, but that will change as it moves toward the northern Gulf Coast. Isaac should slow down as it gets further north and could create a scenario that has it making landfall in a spot similar to 2005's Hurricane Katrina and, even more ominously, on the seven-year anniversary.

But, before everyone goes crazy with that scenario -- this is assuming you haven't watched network television, where they seem to have determined already that this storm will crush New Orleans with the force of a neutron bomb -- the fact is Isaac is no Katrina. As Eric Berger over at the Houston Chronicle pointed out in a reasoned post this morning on his SciGuy blog, Katrina was already substantially stronger than Isaac at the same points in their development and the 2005 hurricane would pass over substantially warmer waters -- the very thing needed for rapid intensification -- than Isaac has ahead of it on its way to landfall to the east of NOLA.

This should by no means diminish the fact that Isaac will bring a bunch of wind and rain to the Gulf Coast this week, but even the most bullish forecasts are calling for a modest category-two storm at landfall with no rapid intensification predicted.

More »

European forecasting model next Tuesday or Wednesday.

With all the advances in computer modeling and meteorological technology, ultimately, weather is just sometimes difficult to predict. Case in point: current Tropical Storm Isaac, floating along in the Caribbean Sea worrying the crap out of people all along the Gulf Coast.

For the past couple of days, forecast tracks have focused primarily on Florida, with some even speculating that a forecast landfall in Tampa Bay just in time for the Republican National Convention might be an Obama administration hoax. Frankly, I'm surprised people haven't suggested the president is manipulating the weather with his giant "laser" that he keeps on the surface of the moon. It's true, people!

Anyway, while no one but us weather geeks was paying attention, the forecast models began shifting a bit west, and today's noon run of the über-reliable European model actually has central Louisiana, not the central coast of Florida, in Isaac's crosshairs.

More »